National Parks Need People, Not Just Postcards
- Andrew Gilruth
- Nov 13
- 3 min read
There’s a story we’re being told about England’s National Parks. It’s a story of ‘rewilding’, of closing gates, of nature restored once human hands are finally removed. It’s a seductive vision, but a dangerous one. Because our National Parks were never meant to be empty.
When Parliament created them in 1949, it gave a clear dual duty to conserve and enhance natural beauty, but also to promote people’s enjoyment and prosperity. Those roles were always intertwined. The landscapes we love were shaped by farming families, keepering skills, forestry jobs and rural communities that still look after them today.
A Narrowing Vision
Yet a different narrative is creeping in. The latest report from the Campaign for National Parks, a charity, not a statutory body, has boldly set out a blueprint for the next 10 years. And despite that air of authority it projects, its public summary doesn’t reference the long-standing statutory duty to support the economic and social wellbeing of Park communities.
Not once. According to its vision, people are barely participants. At best they are visitors, and one of the pressures to be managed. That might suit a campaigning narrative, but it isn’t what the law says, and it isn’t what our National Parks were created for.
Thankfully, most National Park Authorities have not swallowed this. They know from experience that without working landscapes and thriving villages, biodiversity declines and risk rises. But we must remain alert. Because when major charities forget the second purpose entirely, it becomes easier for policymakers to forget it too.
Lessons from the Moors
Look at the North York Moors. Where keepers manage predators, curlew thrive. Remove that support and they vanish - fast. That’s not conjecture: it’s decades of monitoring showing the difference between a breeding success story and a silent spring. And just this year, the GWCT’s black grouse reintroduction project delivered chicks on these moors.
That would be unthinkable without the protection and habitat structure created by driven grouse moor management. Without keepers, both these iconic birds would be shadows in a visitor centre display cabinet.
Wildfire and Working Landscapes
Or take the Peak District, where keepers are often the first on the scene when yet another wildfire breaks out on a sunny bank holiday. Heather mosaics maintained for red grouse slow the spread of wildfire, a lesson tragically reinforced by the devastating Saddleworth fire just outside the Park in 2018. When fuel loads build unchecked, climate change turns one spark into catastrophe.
The Value of Grazing on Dartmoor
On Dartmoor, the value of grazing isn’t just cultural, it’s now official Government advice. The Defra-commissioned Dartmoor Review (2023) found that livestock, especially cattle, are vital for delivering nature recovery on the moor. Strip grazing away and you don’t get a thriving peatland. Instead you get rank vegetation, wildfire tinder and lost heritage. Balance, not abandonment, is the key.
The Human Cost in the Lakes
Meanwhile in the Lake District National Park, over a fifth of homes are now holiday lets or second homes. When young families are priced out, schools struggle and village pubs become seasonal, weekend-only affairs once the tourists vanish. You don’t hear curlew there. You hear silence and the slow unravelling of community.
People Are the Heart of National Parks
National Parks are not museums, nor wilderness reserves. They are lived-in places with history, culture and livelihoods stitched into every mile. And the true threats to nature are not the people who work the land, but policies guided by ideological distance rather than local knowledge.
Gamekeepers, farmers, ghillies, beaters, rangers, these are the quiet conservationists. They don’t always make glossy campaign headlines, but they make breeding success for waders, healthy deer populations, controlled wildfire risk and resilient rural economies possible.
A Shared Future
Every politician and pressure group should remember one simple truth, a landscape without its people is not a National Park, it’s a postcard.
So yes, let’s restore nature where it’s failing. Let’s take climate change seriously. But let’s also respect the statutory purpose that protects the communities who make that restoration real. Because if the latter collapses, the former will follow, and fast.
Our National Parks have a future worth fighting for. But that future must be shared, not taken from the hands that shaped it.
This article first appeared in Shooting Times.
